Introducing the Org Junkie and my reorganized living room

Have you ever heard of the Org Junkie or may be Menu Plan Monday? Well, over the past couple months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Laura, author of a blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie, which is filled with great tips for making things easier for moms especially.

I have a pretty small house, the main floor has basically 2 rooms, the kitchen and then an open area that functions as the dinning room, living room, family room, play room, tv room, and everything in between! The kids toys were always all over the room, and I hated the fact that we didn’t have a play area set aside for them. I think that I was inspired while working on Laura’s website redesign and I did a little organizing of my own.

I used to have the couches at the back wall, and a big empty area in the middle, so I move up the couches to split the living room a bit and created a tiny play area of the kids. It actually has been working out very well for everyone!

The other storage solutions I’ve had for about the last 3 and a half years, but thought that I would show them anyways…

The TV stand actually houses a lot of our “stuff”, there is a toy box, prayer mats, and the cupboards are home to diapers, wipes, books, playdoh, craft supplies, and many other items that need to be ‘hidden’.

The window seat has little pockets that actually serves as a “garage” for their large planes, trains and automobiles.

I hope that you do check out Laura’s website, I know that you will find her and her tips totally awesome!

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Relax

I’ve spend the past, ummm, I don’t know, 18 or so hours working, almost nonstop, I would LOVE that ball right now!

You say eggplant, aubergine or brinjal, I say baigan

I have a feeling that this NaBloPoMo is going to turn into 30 days of random and useless tidbits about me!

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In Trinidad (and possibly Guyana), we refer to eggplant as “baigan”, and oddly enough, this is my favorite fruit. (Yes, it is a fruit people!) In traditional West Indian cooking, there are 3 main ways to prepare eggplant but I usually just experiment with my own ideas, not because I don’t like it the traditional way, I most certainly do, but because if I mess up the dish, no on can tell!

Recently I’ve been completely in love with Desi-style eggplant, or brinjal, it tastes awesome, well, if you love eggplant and indian spices it does, otherwise it likely tastes like crap. One thing that I’ve noticed though is that the skin could be somewhat bitter, or sour, depending on your taste buds, so if you’re thinking about trying it out for the first time, in whatever dish, you may want to remove the skin.

So, once I had my father in law over for dinner (as my mother in law was out of the country) and I made brinjal for him, with rice because I can’t make roti, and he was totally impressed with the almost authentic taste of it! Yay me! Last night I made some of the easy breezy brinjal, and thought I’d share the recipe with you. If you try it, please let me know what you think!

Simple Indian eggplant recipe

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Basement secrets

Have I ever told you about my basement? No, of course not, because it’s sort of a secret!

Besides the laundry room, which I rarely ever enter, the basement is completely filled with my stuff! And although it is all my stuff, I seldom find myself down there because, in all honesty, it’s a little creepy! But when I do go, it’s like a treasure hunt almost, I will see different things from my past, letters, photos, old calculators, books, and everything else… most of which have escaped my memory.

The main function of the basement though, is supposed to be as a workshop, or you know a “crafty-ish place”, and I even have a tonne of craft supplies as garnish, but sadly I don’t have any room to actually “craft”. Which I guess is ok, given the aforementioned ‘creepiness’!

So, today is the first day of NaBloPoMo and I am giving away a small (because I am not good at mailing big stuff, otherwise I would give you more, truly, you all are sooo worth it!) assortment of crafting supplies from my basement that’s full of secrets!

To find out how to enter, make sure you’re subscribed to this blog, either in your favorite feed reader or by email, there will be a giveaway post, visible only to subscribers, at the end of every week!